Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Beware the Fake "Experts" who Diss Masters as "Mavericks"

"Selling is team sport, not an individual pursuit. Team sports need a framework of rules, to make sure that everyone is playing fairly and that each member of the team is doing their fair share. Asking to opt of those rules is an early sign of someone who doesn’t want to play in a team."http://blogs.gartner.com/david-mitchell/passive-aggressive-sales-people-and-measurement/

Load of [Garbage].

This out of Gartner--of course including a nice little disclaimer at the bottom of the page,

Comments or opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual contributors only, and do not necessarily represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management. Readers may copy and redistribute blog postings on other blogs, or otherwise for private, non-commercial or journalistic purposes, with attribution to Gartner. This content may not be used for any other purposes in any other formats or media. The content on this blog is provided on an "as-is" basis. Gartner shall not be liable for any damages whatsoever arising out of the content or use of this blog.

But this is from "Research Director" David Mitchell..sure, not representative! And it's a statement not surprising when come of an academic-researcher type. Also, from an organization whose bread and butter is pushing (often terribly invalid) systems of measure and metrics.

Why invalid?

Context. Real, psychological, circumstantial, etc. statistics either aren't informing data without it (only directing of attentions for further research), or aren't valid at all...I never see this out of the mouths of entities that push them and their "research>"

Ironically, in relation to an article on salesmen from a research institution, they ignore that salespeople tend to be all about psychological cues...

But most metrics systems are total junk. They are so by necessity. This should be clear to actual scholars in the field:

Goodhart's law.

And not surprisingly, we see here a load of rationalizing junk attempting to demonize and make intolerable anyone who "doesn't want to play in a team!" What would the world do with lone achievers and superstars to singlehandedly dash and expose systems of metrics for what they are? The unselling, unachieving research experts for knowing little or nothing?

That is, we see a load of unargued, baseless, unreasoning appeal to [abstract] values and prejudices and no substance to try to create a certain [poor] mental currency in those it might sway, convenient to those selling something.

But contrary to this little opine: I know superstars. They're guys who convert entire regions into super-profitable territories for undesirable and long-shot products and services who are singelhandedly far beyond entire teams' combined abilities and experience, and therefore need to be left alone.

Put another way: playing with "the team" for them is to surround (hinder) them with a confederacy of dunces. At least, relatively speaking. I know not just sales superstars, but superstars in other fields too: whose regional directors are ultimately canned for being made look like such fools by these people, and whose entire immediate departmental peers go into frenzies and conspire on how to oust or eliminate them, because these individuals make them all, combined, look so terrible.

Put another way (again), these are types who need the relatively failing or incomparably unproductive to just keep out of the way--they singlehandedly drive organizations into making many thousands, then millions, sometimes even billions in a given territory, or recover that, or drive effficiencies like that...

But returning to just sales: it is is attitude, aggression, unwillingness to cease being relentless...in short, individual. There *can* be team sales efforts: tag-teaming in many situations is VERY effective. Particularly, when it's a very complex product, service, or combination: but junk thinking like this will just poison minds against big-achievers who are consistently such: the masters. Perhaps too very convenient to the dunces who sell products and "systems" and "thinking" to spread the feelies-good for "the team."

--

Addendum:

There's another important insight to add here.

Having observed true genius and superstars, systems imposed as "accountability" frameworks, or which make sure "everyone is playing fairly", or "each member of the team is doing their fair share"! tend to mean "conforming, invasive, dictatorial, ensure-they-work-nonstop..."

Things that sound nice to people who walk around talking about "fair share", little despots and dictators pretending to be liberals and want to impose uniformity of rules on all, regardless of actual skills or merits...and which kills, not just productivity, but creativity.

For every 100,000 dunces working endlessly to produce marginal results you'll find that evil "maverick" who would be deemed, by their peers and superiors, to be "goofing-off", which is really getting the juices flowing the way they need to...yet they still continue in their constant trouncing of the many others at what they do, almost as if not working at all--"unfair!"

Life.

And not unjust: one has more talent or capacity than the other. Why is that therefore unjust or unfair? It is his (or hers) by their very own nature and being who they are. Nobody, that I know of, claims it was unfair that Michelangelo simply saw in stone what it should be made into, like a crazy, and made it come out. Why should these people be made to conform to regularities and useless tasks to be brought into line with the rest of them?

Of course, "[a]sking to opt of those rules is an early sign of someone who doesn’t want to play in a team" though: that's often because "the team", besides being incomparably less successful, is often your enemy, corrupt, backbiting, etc.--success in an endeavor most often requires rejecting and keeping not just them out of your way, but you out of theirs.

Theirs, and overly mis-educated professionals who come-in as wolves pretending to know anything.

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